1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to removal of relatively unimportant shapes from a set of shapes.
2. Related Art
In the fabrication of semiconductor chips and integrated circuits from a substrate, masks are used for defining regions of a substrate in which fabrication steps, such as etching, are to be performed. In forming the mask, mask data defining geometric shapes are processed. Such processing of mask data is inefficient. Accordingly, there is a need for a method to process mask data efficiently.